Will Anyone Support Lubbock Mayor McBrayer's Big Tax Cut?

OPINION — Lubbock Mayor Mark McBrayer is betting that he can secure a significant property tax cut for Lubbock residents by rallying three more council members to his side. The proposed reduction would set the tax rate over 2 percent lower than the anticipated rate for FY 2025.

As the Lubbock City Council prepares for its budget session on Tuesday at 2 p.m., McBrayer faces the entrenched bureaucracy. The agenda already includes a proposal to approve a 2.28 percent tax increase, as agreed upon during the August 13 council meeting. The city manager's budget, developed with input from the council through a series of workshops, sets the tax rate at 0.477402 cents per $100 of property valuation.

However, during the last council meeting on August 27, McBrayer introduced a modified budget that adheres to the FY 2025 No New Revenue Rate.

McBrayer's goal is to keep the tax rate close to the No New Revenue Rate while accounting for a windfall of over $2.1 million expected to boost the City’s general fund. This revenue comes from the Transmission Cost of Service (TCOS), a sort of franchise fee collected by the City of Lubbock from power generation companies that transport electricity through the city to distant locations.

McBrayer’s proposed tax rate of 0.466749 is more than a penny lower than the rate in City Manager W. Jarrett Atkinson’s budget.

While McBrayer’s cuts are modest, they reflect priorities that resonate across the city. He wisely increases funding in politically popular areas, such as boosting the across-the-board pay raise for all city employees to 4 percent, up from the original budget’s 3.5 percent. He also proposes a 5 percent salary increase for police officers.

McBrayer's Budget at a Glance:

To fund these initiatives, McBrayer cuts $325,000 earmarked for repairing the Clapp pool, arguing that the pool is beyond repair and that further investment would be a waste. He also eliminates five unfilled uniformed positions in the Lubbock Police Department and reduces funding for Market Lubbock, a program that has faced criticism from both sides of the aisle.

Market Lubbock allocates a significant portion of its budget to small business subsidies. Conservative City Councilman David Glasheen argues that this approach unfairly benefits a few businesses at the expense of others.

“You help one small business with a Market Lubbock grant at the expense of nine other businesses that are paying for it,” Glasheen said, calling the grant program immoral and contrary to free-market principles.

On the other side, Councilwoman Christy Martinez-Garcia supports the grants, saying they give local businesses the opportunity to compete and hire locally.

It’s clear that Martinez-Garcia won’t support McBrayer in his quest to maintain low taxes.

To succeed, McBrayer needs three council members to back his plan to keep the FY 2025 property tax rate close to the No New Revenue Rate. He has one likely ally in Glasheen, who submitted an alternative budget with a tax rate even lower than the NNRR. Another potential ally is Councilwoman Dr. Jennifer Wilson, who proposed a budget that maintains the City Manager’s tax rate but rearranges spending priorities. The mayor needs one more to succeed.

Councilman Tim Collins could be another supporter, but he spent much of last Tuesday’s budget workshop criticizing the idea of lower taxes, warning of a “yo-yo” effect—where taxes are reduced now only to be raised more significantly later.

Glasheen countered this argument, stating, “I don't like the suggestion that we should raise taxes now so that we can raise them less in the future.”

Collins is pointing at a giant obstacle for McBrayer that is the ongoing Meet and Confer process with the police and fire departments, whose respective associations have entered into collective bargaining with the City. But, McBrayer can argue, the final agreements, which could significantly increase public safety payrolls, must be ratified by the council.

There’s speculation that these agreements could lead to a 20 percent increase in payroll costs over several years. McBrayer can counter this by reminding the council that they have the final say on ratifying the agreements, and by highlighting that his proposed 5 percent police pay raise is a substantial preemptive measure, even before the Meet and Confer contract is finalized—all while keeping Lubbock’s property tax rate low.